It’s more than 20 years since the tobacco firm Philip Morris International Inc. commissioned a controversial research paper, “Public Finance Balance of Smoking in the Czech Republic,” which infamously argued that smokers cut state health care expenditure by dying early. The paper was considered an outrage and led to a high-profile apology from the company, after being widely derided by politicians and commentators internationally. The company’s July 9 proposal to buy the respiratory diseases firm Vectura Group plc for $1.2 billion is already looking just as provocative according to U.K. politicians and anti-smoking groups, who are calling for the government to intervene to stop it going ahead.
Following November’s equity investment that brought it a 14% ownership in Protomer Technologies Inc., Eli Lilly and Co. has acquired the privately held company engineering protein and peptide therapeutics that sense molecular activators. If development and commercial milestones are met, the deal could be worth more than $1 billion.
I-Mab Biopharma Co. Ltd. announced collaborations with mRNA biotech company Immorna (Hangzhou) Biotechnology Co. Ltd. and AI-enabled R&D company Neox Biotech Co. Ltd., gaining access to transformative technologies to discover and develop oncology therapeutics.
Sonde Health struck a deal with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. to embed its vocal health biomarker product, Sonde One, in the Snapdragon 888 and 778G 5G mobile platforms. The deal would make vocal biomarker monitoring native to the devices that use the company’s chips in mobile and IoT devices.
In a deal that could be worth up to $937.5 million, Biogen Inc. licensed rights to phase II-stage, brain-penetrant BTK inhibitor orelabrutinib from Innocare Pharma Ltd. for the treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) and autoimmune diseases. It’s the first mega out-licensing deal for the Chinese firm, which will receive $125 million up front and is eligible to receive up to $812.5 million in potential development milestones and commercial payments, plus tiered royalties in the low to high teens on potential future net sales.
The M&As that are the current business model of the drug and device world are in for increased scrutiny under the executive order U.S. President Joe Biden signed July 9. Answering the administration’s call for a whole-of-government-approach to increasing competition in the U.S., the Department of Justice “will closely examine its antitrust guidelines and policy statements to better educate the public on its enforcement priorities, and it will heighten its efforts to prevent mergers that would result in excessive consolidations of purchasing power,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Steven Roy, CEO of Convergence Medical Sciences Inc., has designed a low-cost device that boosts the number of patients on a single ventilator to four simultaneously. To do this, he is collaborating with Calgary-based consulting engineers, Exergy Solutions Inc., to take the international Red Dot design winner through the Health Canada approval process.
I-Mab Biopharma Co. Ltd. announced collaborations with mRNA biotech company Immorna (Hangzhou) Biotechnology Co. Ltd. and AI-enabled R&D company Neox Biotech Co. Ltd., gaining access to transformative technologies to discover and develop oncology therapeutics.
Novo Nordisk A/S has acquired a clinical-stage humanized monoclonal antibody and transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR) program in a deal that could bring Prothena Corp. plc potential development and sales milestone payments of up to $1.2 billion. Also in the agreement, Dublin-based Prothena brings in $100 million in up-front and near-term clinical milestones payments as Novo gets full worldwide rights to the intellectual property and related rights of Prothena’s ATTR amyloidosis business and pipeline.
PARIS ‒ Kiomed Pharma SA reported it has signed an exclusive agreement with fellow Belgian company, Moveup SA for the development and licensing of a mobile companion application intended for personalized conservative management treatment for patients suffering from intra-articular osteoarthritis.
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